"...a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk."

Friday, August 1, 2014

Anderssen Game 2

This another game for my project. I'm learning some interesting things. Basically, I have been looking at a good number of Anderssen games. However, ChessAdmin suggested that I post about my progress and I thought this was a good idea. So I wanted to post games that I actually analyzed as there's not much point in me just posting a game that anyone could find in their own database. But there is a big difference between reviewing a game and kind of looking at a couple of variations and really trying to analyze a game. The latter is of course much more time consuming and I've been busy particularly with studying Chinese, but also with other chess activity. Basically my method has just been to look at the game and just start asking questions about anything I don't understand about the game and to try to answer those questions.

The other factor is that for right now, I am not using an engine. This seems right because I feel I will learn more if I try to work out what is going on by myself. But this means to come to conclusions I have to actually play around with the position for quite awhile, and most of the variations I try will be pure junk. But it's only by seeing them, seeing why they are bad that I can gradually make progress to better variations.

So, obviously I'm not offering this as a definitive analysis. There may well be big holes. The point is of course just to get practice analyzing and to extract understanding for myself. On the other hand, constructive criticism of my analysis is always welcome..

This is another game Anderssen lost. It seems he was ok up until white offers a knight and a pawn. It seems black would be ok if he took the knight and then retreated. The problem seems to come when he insists on taking the pawn with his king. After that he is chased across the board and losses become inevitable. I think this may have had to do with the style of the times. Maybe he saw that he could give up the knight but decided he was just going to hang on for the win. The attack that follows is pretty nice.

21...♔b8 Giving back the knight seems to solve blacks problems. 22.dxe7♖c823.b5 possible continuation but 23...♗d724.♕a3♕g6 Black ends up a pawn down. Maybe this line isn't much in the style of the times though.

22.♗f4♔e623.♖ae1♗e224.♖f2♘f525.♖exe2♔f626.♗e5♔g627.g4♕xg4 This is a little puzzling. I think the point is that here black goes down a queen for a rook and a pawn. That's about the same as down a piece. The problem is that if black tries to save the queen with like Qg5, he ends up losing both the knight and then will be forced to give up the queen for a rook anyway. So it's better if you're going to keep playing to trade the queen in right away.